The most important thing to understand when starting the game is how citizens work and what they can do.

The amount of citizens your city can accommodate is based on the level of your housing, which in turn is effected by the level of your town hall. It is always advisable to have the highest level housing possible so you can always draft the maximum amount of citizens to your city.

Once drafted, citizens become idle, giving you tax money on an hourly basis. In this form citizens will give you the most money per hour; however, they don’t give any other benefits when idle.

Idle citizens can be used for 3 main roles: Workers, Labor and Military.

Workers can be distributed to your factories to provide different resources, whilst working in factories your citizens will still generate tax but at a reduced rate.

Labor is used whenever building / upgrading your city, you do not have to assign citizens to labor as they will be deducted from your idle citizens; once building is completed the citizens will be returned to your idle population. Each building will require a certain amount of labor to construct. You can simultaneously build as many buildings as you like, providing you have the resources and labor.

Citizens can also be turned into soldiers, at which point they will no longer pay you tax. Once turned into soldiers they can be armed and used to fight in battles, or donated to your legion.

It’s always a good idea to keep some citizens idle for labor and to earn you some money.